Sony bigwig Naomi Matsuoka said: "Looking ahead, PS5 will enter the old age stage. We will care more about the balance between profit and sales. For this reason, we expect the annual sales speed of PS5 hardware will start dropping from the next financial year."

Sony also said it has no plans to release "any new major games" in its next financial year. 

The company now expects to sell 4 million fewer PS5 consoles in its 2023 financial year ending March 31st compared to previous guesses. The change came as part of today's third-quarter earnings release, which saw Sony lower the PS5 sales hope from the 25 million consoles it expected to sell down to 21 million.

While PS5 sales were up in Sony's third quarter, going up to 8.2 million units from 6.3 million in the same quarter the previous year, This was roughly a million units lower than it had previously thought. That's despite the release of the big game Spider-Man 2, good sales of other games, and the launch of a new thinner PS5 in November.

In its third quarter, Sony's gaming revenue was up 16 per cent versus the previous year's period, at 1.4 trillion yen (around €8.6 billion). Still, operating income was down 26 per cent to 86.1 billion yen (around €444 million) due to discounts in the third quarter ending on 31  December.